The older man sounded more than a touch disgusted. “How the hell would you do that?”
“There’s naught you can’t do if you’ve the imagination and the patience. Then I’ll bind her up in the trees with brambles where everyone can see, and cut the bloody cross in her, and put a bucket underneath to catch her guts, and send ’em to the other side.”
“What, her guts?”
“Aye, in a pretty box. Hardwood, nicely carved. With flowers, maybe. Or no! Herbs. So those old fools won’t smell what they’re getting till they open it.” And he gave a satisfied grunt, like he was talking about a nice fish he’d catch, or a nice meal he’d eat, or a nice sit on the porch he couldn’t wait to have at sunset. “Imagine the looks on their faces.” And he chuckled like her guts in a box would be quite the height of drollery.
“Fuck,” breathed Rikke.
Isern just whispered, “Shhhhhhhhh…”
“But that’s for later.” And Nightfall gave a disappointed sigh. “Can’t cook what you haven’t caught, can you? My father’s offering a big gild for her, that’s sure. Whoever brings her in’ll be a wealthy man.”
The woman called Wonderful sounded like she was hardly enjoying this any more than Rikke was. “Right y’are, Chief. We’ll be looking.”
“Lovely. You can get back to your pissing now, Clover.”
“That’s all right. Won’t need another for a while, I reckon.”
Rikke heard soft footfalls moving away. Perhaps she should’ve been frozen with fear. The dead knew she’d a right to be. But what she felt instead was a boiling fury. A fury that warmed her through despite the icy water frothing to her chin. A fury that tempted her to slip from the stream with her knife between her teeth and cut the bloody cross in Stour Nightfall right then and there.
Rikke’s father had always told her vengeance was a waste of effort. That letting it go was the strong thing, the wise thing, the right thing. That blood only led to more blood. But his lessons seemed far away now, meant for a warmer place. She clenched her jaw, and narrowed her eyes, and swore to herself that if she lived out the week, she’d make it her business to see Stour Nightfall fucked by a pig.
“I’ll be honest, Wonderful,” came the man’s voice, the one called Clover, speaking soft like he was sharing a secret, “I’m finding that bastard increasingly troubling.”
“Aye, I know.”
“Took it for an act at first, but I’m starting to think he’s everything he pretends to be.”
“Aye, I know.”
“Guts in a box? With herbs?”
“Aye, I know.”
“He’ll be king one o’ these days, will guts-in-a-box over yonder. King o’ the Northmen. Him.”
A long pause, then a weary grunt. “It’s a thing no right-thinking person could look forward to.”
Rikke could only agree. She thought she saw a hint of their reflections, dancing among the black branches in the water.
“You see something down there?”
She stiffened, numb fingers curling tight around the grip of her knife. She saw the jaw muscles clench on the side of Isern’s face, blade of her spear sliding from the water, smeared with pitch so it wouldn’t catch the light.
“What? Fish?”
“Aye. Worth getting my rod, d’you think?”
The sound of Wonderful hawking up, then a glob of phlegm came spinning over from above and plopped into the water. “Nothing in this stream worth catching, I reckon.”
It Was Bad
The sun was setting when he came home, just a pink glimmer over black hills. The valley was in darkness but Broad could’ve walked the way blindfold. Knew every rut in the track, every stone in the tumbledown wall beside it.
All so familiar. But all so strange.
After two years away, you’d think a man would run headlong towards a place he loved, the people he loved, with the biggest smile his cheeks could hold. But Broad trudged slow as the condemned to the scaffold, and smiled about as much, too. The man who left had feared nothing. The one coming back was scared all the time. He hardly even knew what of. Himself, maybe.
When he saw the house, huddled among those bare trees, lamplight showing around the shutters, he had this strange urge to walk on. This strange thought he didn’t belong there any more. Not with what he’d seen. Not with what he’d done. What if he trod it in with him?
But the path leading past was a coward’s path. He clenched his aching fists. Gunnar Broad was no coward. Ask anyone.
Took all the courage he had to knock on that door, though. More than it had to climb the ladders at Borletta, or lead the charge into those pikes at Musselia, or even carry those men dying of the grip in the long winter after. But he knocked.
“Who is it?” Her voice, beyond the door, and it made him wince worse than the points of those pikes had. Till that moment, he’d been afraid she wouldn’t be there. That she’d have moved on. Forgotten him. Or maybe he’d been hoping she would’ve.
He could hardly find any voice at all. “It’s me, Liddy. It’s Gunnar.”
The door rattled open, and there she stood. She’d changed. Not near as much as he had, but she’d changed. Leaner, maybe. Harder, maybe. But when she smiled, it still lit the gloomy world, the way it always had.
“What are you doing knocking at your own door, you big fool?”
And he just started crying. A jolting sob first that came all the way from his stomach. Then there was no stopping it. He fumbled his eye-lenses off with a trembling hand and all the tears he hadn’t shed in Styria, on account of Gunnar Broad being no coward, came burning down his crushed-up face.
Liddy stepped forward and he shrank away, hunched and hurting, arms up as if to fend her off. Like she was made of glass and might shatter in his hands. She caught him even so. Thin arms, but a hold he couldn’t break, and though she was a head shorter than him, she held his face against her chest, and kissed his head, and whispered, “Shhhh, now. Shhhhh.”
After a while, when his sobs started to calm, she put her hands on his cheeks and lifted his head so she was looking straight up at him, calm and serious.
“It was bad, then, was it?” she asked him.
“Aye,” he croaked out. “It was bad.”
She smiled. That smile that lit up the world. Close enough that even without his lenses he could actually see it. “But you’re home now.”
“Aye. I’m home now.” And he set to crying again.
The thunk of the axe made Broad flinch. He told himself it was the sound of honest work done well. He told himself he was home, safe, far from the battlefield. But maybe he’d brought the battlefield home with him. Maybe the battlefield was whatever dirt he stood on now. He tried to hide it under a joke.
“I still say chopping wood is man’s work.”
May set another log on the block and hefted the axe. “When the men sod off to Styria, it all becomes women’s work.”
When he left, she’d been boyish, quiet, awkward. As if her skin didn’t fit her. She was bony still, but there was a quick strength in the way she moved. She’d grown up fast. She’d had to. Another thunk and two more neat pieces of wood went tumbling.
“I should’ve stayed here and sent you off to fight,” said Broad. “Maybe we’d have won.”
May smiled at him, and he smiled that he could make her smile, and wondered that someone who’d done all the bad he’d done could’ve had a hand in making something as good as she was.
“Where’d you get the lenses?” she asked.
Broad touched a finger to them. Sometimes forgot they were even on his face, till he took ’em off and everything beyond arm’s reach became a smudge. “I saved a man. Lord Marshal Mitterick.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“Commander o’ the army, no less. There was an ambush, and I happened to be there, and, well…” He realised he’d bunched his fists trembling tight again and forced them open. “He thought I’d saved him. But I had to admit I’d no clue who he was till after
the business was done, since I couldn’t see further than five strides. So he got me these as a gift.” He took the lenses off, and breathed on them, and wiped them carefully with the hem of his shirt. “Probably cost six months of a soldier’s pay. Miracle o’ the modern age.” And he hooked them back over his ears, and into the familiar groove across the bridge of his nose. “But I’m grateful, ’cause now I can appreciate my daughter’s beauty even halfway across the yard.”
“Beauty.” And she gave a scornful snort but looked just a bit pleased at the same time. The sun broke through and was warm on Broad’s smile, and for a moment it was like it had been before. As if he never went.
“So you fought, then?”
Broad’s mouth felt dry of a sudden. “I fought.”
“What was it like?”
“Well…” All that time spent dreaming of her face and now she was looking right at him, it was hard to meet her eye. “It was bad.”
“I tell everyone my father’s a hero.”
Broad winced. The clouds shifted and cast the yard into shadow, and the dread was at his shoulder again. “Don’t tell ’em that.”
“What should I tell ’em?”
He frowned down at his aching hands, rubbed at one with the other. “Not that.”
“What do the marks mean?”
Broad tried to twitch his shirt cuff down over the Ladderman’s tattoo, but the blue stars on his knuckles still showed. “Just something the boys I was with did.” And he slipped his hand behind him. Where May couldn’t see it. Where he didn’t have to.
“But—”
“Enough questions,” said Liddy, stepping out onto the porch. “Your father just got back.”
“And I’ve got plenty to do,” he said, standing. They must’ve been working hard to keep the house presentable, but it was too much for three, let alone two, looked like it was crumbling back into the land. “Must be half a dozen leaks to mend.”
“Be careful. Put your weight on the roof, I’ve a feeling the whole house might fall down.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll check on our flock first, though. I hear the price for wool’s never better, what with all these new mills. They up the valley?”
May blinked over at her mother, and Liddy gave an odd kind of grimace, and Broad felt that dread pressing on him all the heavier. “What is it?”
“We don’t have a flock no more, Gunnar.”
“What?”
“I wanted to give you a proper night’s sleep without having to worry.” Liddy heaved up a sigh seemed to come right from her worn shoes. “Lord Isher fenced the valley in. Said we couldn’t graze there any more.”
Broad hardly understood what she was saying. “The valley’s common land. Always has been.”
“Not any more. King’s edict. It’s happening all over. Next valley, too. We had to sell the flock to him.”
“We had to sell him our sheep so he could graze ’em on our land?”
“He gave us a good price. Some lords didn’t give their tenants that much.”
“So I get fucked when I go to war and I get fucked when I come back?” he snarled. The voice hardly sounded like his. “You didn’t…do anything?”
Liddy’s eyes were hard. “I couldn’t think of anything to do. Maybe you could’ve, but you weren’t here.”
“None o’ this works without a flock!” His father had raised sheep, and his grandfather, and his grandfather’s grandfather. Felt like the whole world had come unravelled. “What’ll we do?” He found he’d clenched his fists again. He was shouting but he couldn’t stop. “What’ll we do?”
And he saw May’s lip trembling like she was about to cry, and Liddy put an arm around her, and all the anger drained out of him and left him cold and desperate.
“I’m sorry.” He’d sworn never to lose his temper again. Sworn he’d live for the two of them, give them a good life, and he’d fucked it up a few hours through the door. “I’m sorry.” He took a step towards them, lifting a hand, then saw the tattoos on the knuckles and jerked it back.
Liddy spoke soft and steady, looking him in the eye. “We’ve no choice, Gunnar. Isher offered to buy us out and we’ve got to go. Valbeck, I was thinking. There’s work in Valbeck. In the new mills.”
Broad could only stare at her. And in the silence, he heard the sound of horses, and turned towards the track.
There were three men coming up it. Coming slow, like they had all day to get there. One on a big chestnut. Two on a wagon with a creaky wheel. Gunnar recognised the driver. Lennart Seldom, the miller’s younger brother. Broad had always reckoned him a coward and there was nothing in his shifty squint now to change his opinion.
“It’s Lennart Seldom,” he muttered.
“It is,” said Liddy. “May, get inside.”
“But Ma—”
“Inside.”
The other two, Broad didn’t know. A long, lean one sat by Seldom, swaying with the jolting of the cart, a big flatbow across his knees. Wasn’t loaded, which was a good thing, as they’d a habit of going off at the worst times, but Broad couldn’t see any reason for him to have it even so. A weapon for killing men. Or at least for threatening to.
He liked the look of the last rider even less. Big and bearded, with a fancy cavalry sword hanging low at his side, and a fancy three-cornered hat on his head, and a fancy way of sitting his saddle and looking around like this was his land.
He reined his horse in closer to the house than was polite, twisted his hat off, scrubbing at his flattened hair with his nails, considering Broad in thoughtful silence. Seldom brought the wagon to a halt behind him, between the two big lichen-spattered gateposts Gunnar’s grandfather had carved on the boundary.
“Gunnar,” he said, shifty eyes flicking to Liddy and back.
“Seldom.”
Liddy tidied a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and the wind took it right away and set it flicking about her worried face again.
“You’re back, then.” If Seldom was trying to sound happy about it, he fell well short. “Where’d you get the lenses?”
“In Styria.”
“How was it?”
“Bad,” said Broad.
“Looks like you lost weight.”
The one with the flatbow flashed a crooked grin. “How big did he use to be?”
“Even bigger,” said the bearded one, barely giving Broad a glance as he settled his hat back on. “Evidently.”
“Too little food and too much shitting, I guess,” said Broad.
“The soldier’s curse,” said the bearded one. “Name’s Marsh.” He bit the words off short like he didn’t care for talking and wanted to spend as little time at it as he could.
“I’m Able,” said the thin one. “We work for Lord Isher.”
“What kind of work?” asked Broad, though it was plain from the weapons.
“This and that. Buying up property, mostly. This is Isher’s valley—”
“This bit of it ain’t,” said Broad.
Marsh gave an unhappy grunt, stretched his chin forward to scratch at his beard.
“You can’t make a living here, Gunnar.” Seldom gave a wheedling little chuckle. “You know that. Not now there’s no grazing. To be fair to Isher, the king’s hiked up his taxes neck high to pay for his bloody wars. There’s land getting fenced in all over. Worked with machines.”
“Efficiency,” grunted Marsh, not even looking round.
His not caring a shit made Broad care all the more. “My father died on this land,” he said, struggling to keep his voice down. “Fighting the Gurkish.”
“I know. Mine, too.” Seldom shrugged. “But what can I do?”
“You just do what you’re told, eh?”
“If I don’t, someone else will.”
“Progress,” grunted Marsh.
“Is it?” Broad frowned up the valley, towards the other houses, all sitting quiet. He’d thought it was strange, that there was no smoke from the chimneys. “Turned all these othe
rs out already, did you? Lant and his daughters, and the Barrows, and Old Neiman?”
“Neiman died, but the rest sold up.”
“We made ’em see the sense in it,” said Able, shifting that flatbow in his lap.
“So why’s my wife still here?”
Seldom sneaked another shifty glance at Liddy. “Just wanted to give her some more time, ’cause we all know each other and—”
“You always liked her. I understand. I like her myself. That’s why I married her.”
Liddy had a worried, warning note in her voice. “Gunnar—”
“Why she married me, I couldn’t say. But she did.”
Seldom gave a watery effort at a smile. “Look, friend—”
“I wasn’t your friend before I left.” Felt suddenly like it was someone else speaking, and Broad was just watching. “I’m even less your friend now.”
“That’s enough.” Marsh nudged his horse forward with his heels. Nudged her between Broad and the chopping block, where the axe was. A good horseman. He sat high on his saddle with the sky bright behind so Broad had to squint up at him. “Lord Isher’s going to have his valley one way or another. No point being stubborn. Better for you to leave with a little money in your pocket.”
“Better than what?”
Marsh took a heavy breath through his nose. “Be a shame if this lovely house o’ yours were to catch fire one night.”
His hand crept down. Not towards the peeling gilt basketwork of that fancy sword. To a knife, most likely. Thought he’d goad Broad into rashness, then he could just lean over and stab him, cut through a problem with one bit of sharp metal that a lot of talk couldn’t seem to unravel. Maybe that’d worked for him before. Worked a lot of times.
“Catch fire, you say?” Funny thing was, Broad didn’t feel angry. Such a relief to be able to let go, even for a moment, that he almost smiled.
“That’s right.” Marsh leaned down towards him. “Be a shame… if your lovely wife and daughter was—”
Broad caught his boot and flung him out of his saddle. Marsh gave a shocked grunt, flailed at the air as he went tumbling down.
A Little Hatred Page 9